Participant Observations 2/11/20 - The Impact of COVID-19 on the 2020 AFL Season

 The AFL Season finished about two weeks ago, and since then I've had time to reflect on how the season unfolded in the context on COVID-19, and the impact it had on my consumption of the game:

I really missed the sport for the 10-12 weeks of lockdown. During this time, I survived on video games, binge watching Netflix series, writing the PhD, and weekly kicks of footy with a mate. The AFL tried to fill this void with replays of old games online, but I can't remember watching a single one of these.

I continued to pay my Sydney Swans membership, even though I couldn't see my team play. It's only $20-odd each month, so not an exorbitant amount, and I wanted to help my team through the crisis.

Probably a highlight during the lockdown was the simultaneous co-watching of the 1989 Grand Final with Benny Douglas. The game is on YouTube, and we started watching at the same time, while also communicating via Facebook video messaging. It was awesome.

When the footy did return, and I may have mentioned this previously, but I did not like the shortened quarters. Completely understandable why they did it, and I think we may go back to 18-minutes next year and not the full 20, but 16 is way too short. If a team has a strong quarter, it can be difficult to make that ground back.

Obviously low crowds wasn't great, but the production innovations that were introduced were great, such as the fake crowd noise, and hub remote production.

The AFL being played in Brisbane was the only reasonable outcome, given the hard border in place in WA, and how much support the Queensland government had given to the AFL during the season. Unfortunately the grand final was wet, so it wasn't a great spectacle, but I'm also not a fan of the night grand final. The day seemed to drag on, and it was hard to know when to start getting excited.

Unfortunately with restrictions on public gatherings in place, we could only book a table of 10 for the game at the pub. It worked out ok though, because we had a good group of people there and it was a great night. There was even a couple of Swans at the pub we were in - Sam Reid and Luke Parker. Didn't chat to them though...

In an effort to get the season in, the AFL compressed the fixture, with some teams playing multiple games in a short period of time. this created games on every night of the week effectively, which was awesome, although the free-to-air coverage was still mostly limited to Thursday to Monday nights, with the mid-week games broadcast on Foxtel.

It was interesting to see the AFL and the clubs doing some quite interesting thing to keep their fans engaged. This was especially impressive, given that clubs stood down quite a lot of staff during the lockdown.

No doubt some of the changes made this year will stay with us for next year. I hope we don't go to a night grand final. Remote production hubs will be more common. Video conferencing will become a stable in coverage. Thursday night games should become more common.

Some questions remain unanswered though - will crowds be able to get back into venues? How long will quarter be? When will the season start, and how big will playing lists be? Will there be another quarantine situation with Hubs next year. How will the fixture work? Will it be a day or night grand final? What will happen to AFL community initiatives like AusKick? How big is the debt hole the AFL is in?

However, I am so grateful that an AFL season was able to be played this year. I remember talking to friends during the lockdown, and they weren't confident that a season would be played at all. But during the lockdown, I also realised what a massive part of my week it makes up, and the hole left behind without it. So much stuff to talk about with people and such a focus of my consumption behaviour.

I also realise how much I miss some of the pay television coverage. I don't know if I miss it enough to go back to it - hopefully I will be able to afford Kayo again when the season rolls around next year. 

Already can't wait for it to return next year.

Participant Observations 2/11/20 - Free-to-Air Experiment Results

 At the start of the 2020 AFL season, I cancelled my Kayo subscription. The reason for doing this was to see if and how my viewership of AFL would change over the course of a season with no pay television coverage, meaning I relied only on free content to get information about the league.

On reflection, I had the following observations:

• I miss AFL360 the most. This is clearly the best news source for AFL on television. Obviously I also missed a lot of the other pay-television content, such as Open Mike, and some of the other shoulder content. But 360 is finger-on-the-pulse stuff.
• In it's absence, I relied most heavily on Footy Classified on Channel 9. This was the preferred replacement because it is on twice a week, and features Caroline Wilson, Eddie McGuide, and Craig Hutcheson. While I detest Craig and Eddie as people, they are really informative. I also grew appreciation for Matt Lloyd and Ross Lyon, the other regulars on the show.
• I noticed a small uptick in watching The Front Bar, but not much. I probably should have watched this more. It's like the Before the Bounce, a show on Channel 10 that I used to love. It's easily the funniest AFL show on television. I think I normally had other stuff on Thursday night I was doing.
• I also watched highlights packages on YouTube way more. These highlights packages - about 6-9 minutes long, would be available on the platform normally about 12 hours after the game. It didn't give a huge oversight of the games that were on pay television that I didn't see, but you could see how the game unfolded, who might have played well etc, as the highlights often included key moments and injuries, etc.
• I didn't watch much Channel 7 coverage at all. I think they cancelled Talking Footy or their regular panel show early in the season, and their other coverage didn't reach me. However, obviously I watched more of their pre- and post-game coverage, although thankfully, there was no Roaming Brian this year, because of quarantine conditions around players.
• My overall online consumption probably increased marginally. I probably paid more attention to my own clubs websites, and the AFL app as well, although the app is not very good.

On the whole, I definitely did not get the quality or quantity of information that I did last year, but the quality of coverage on pay television may not have been as good this year either, because of all the hurdles that COVID-19 put on everything. For example, on the rare occasions when I did get to see 360 coverage, the guests usually appeared via Zoom, so the experience of watching may not have been as rich this year.

Participant Observations 2/11/2020 - AFL Evolution 2

 About six weeks ago I purchased AFL Evolution 2, a video game of the competition.

I've now spent over 10 hours playing it, and had the following observations:

• The game is not remarkably different to the first version, which came out about 18 months ago. Similar graphics, similar gameplay, similar look and feel.
• There are some slight improvements. The graphics are slightly better, and there is the ability to download updated playing lists. There are more 'trick' options like tapping the ball along the ground and the fend tackle.
• They have added a coaching function, where you recruit and train players, set team strategy, manage the salary cap etc. It looks interesting but very complicated. Will probably need to spend some time investigating.
• The online match function still does not have any players that I can find. I haven't explored this option too much just yet, as I've mostly been focused on career mode.

Ultimately, it is a superior game to the first version, but I don't think it will sustain me as long as the first version, because it is not different enough to make me want to paly it more.

Having said that, I'm also really happy that we have a game at all. AFL is such a small competition in terms of global market size, so to be able to get a game like this made and out to players is something I don't take for granted.

Clearly, without the same size market and resources as the NBA and FIFA, the game is never going to be as good as the video game versions of those competitions, but I still get up for a nice goal.

I started my career as an 18-year-old playing for the Sydney Swans in the NEAFL. The team won the grand final, and I won the MVP and Rookie of the Year, and was offered a contract by Carlton. Unfortunately no contract offers by the Swans, but Carlton have Patrick Cripps and Matthew Kreuzer, and they feature on a lot of the in-game art, suggesting they are a feature team. I've been dropped to the VFA once, but since bounced back and we're on top of the table half-way through the season.

My player attributes are currently at 80. My player is 7'2" I think, and huge.